The presence or absence of a species across a set of landscape units is a fundamental concept widely used in ecology (e.g., species range or distribution, epidemiology, habitat modelling, resource selection probability functions, as a monitoring metric, metapopulation studies, biodiversity and species co-occurrence). An important sampling issue, however, is that a species may not always be detected when present at a landscape unit. This will result in "false absences" causing parameter estimates to be biased if unaccounted for, possibly leading to misleading results and conclusions, even with moderate levels of imperfect detection.

This workshop will cover many of the latest methods for modelling patterns and dynamics of species occurrence in a landscape while accounting for the imperfect detection of the species. Including: - estimating level of occurrence at single point in time - identifying factors that influence species occurrence - creating species distribution maps - modelling changes in distribution over time - study design

About the instructor: Darryl MacKenzie is an internationally renowned biometrician, and is first author of the seminal paper on occupancy modelling while accounting for imperfect detection (MacKenzie et al., 2002), and many subsequent papers on the general topic. He is also lead author of the recently released second edition of Occupancy Estimation and Modeling.